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Products, Competence and Meaning in the Practices of DIY

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Products, Competence and Meaning in the Practices of DIY Doing it yourself? Products, competence and meaning in the practices of DIY Matt Watson Durham University, [email protected] Elizabeth Shove Lancaster University, [email protected] Draft paper presented at ESA 2005 Torun, Poland. Please check with authors before quoting from or referencing this paper. Abstract DIY is an analytically complex phenomenon. It can simultaneously figure as leisure and work, and as consumption (of materials and tools) and production (of changes to the home). Analysis of the technology and practice of DIY allows us to engage with significant, but relatively unexplored themes that are nonetheless important for theorising consumption. This paper focuses on three such themes. First, consideration of motivations to undertake DIY projects highlights the extent to which consumption practices emerge from and are conditioned not only by cultural expectations, identity, aspirations and the market, but also by the material and practical contexts of everyday life. Secondly, exploration of the array of tools and materials brought together to realise DIY projects presents specific challenges for understanding how consumer goods come to count as useful. Thirdly, we explore the role of competence in accomplishing a DIY project, highlighting how competences are distributed between user and products, how developments in this area shape the realm of DIY consumption, bringing new projects within the reach of amateurs and making traditional tasks easier and faster. We conclude by reflecting on the significance of our DIY analysis for theories of ‘ordinary’ consumption. Introduction This paper emerges from preliminary analysis of data collected in the course of empirical work on ‘Do-It-Yourself’ (DIY) – the accomplishment of home maintenance and improvement by householders without professional help. This empirical work has involved a series of open interviews, primarily with DIY ‘practitioners’ but also with representatives of DIY-related industries, which together form one case study in a broader research project.1 Reflecting its preliminary character, the arguments are exploratory and certainly open to much refinement, if not contestation. Nevertheless, together they highlight the theoretical potential that comes from engagement with DIY; and in so doing draw attention to the existing under-theorisation of the complex relationality through which objects shape and are shaped by everyday life. In so doing, we open one route to reflecting on what it means to add material and stuff, in the context of everyday practices, to theories of consumption. For the purposes of their market research, Mintel defined DIY as “repairs or additions to the home or garden, including installing a new bathroom or kitchen, central heating, putting up shelves, fixing a fence, building a barbecue etc.”, which was treat together with the separate category of ‘decorating’ - “internal and external painting, staining or wallpapering” (Mintel 2005). DIY represents a substantial and steadily growing cultural phenomenon in the UK, with attendant growth in the market which serves it. Around 62% of the UK adult population claim to participate in DIY (Mintel 2003; 2005), and it is estimated to have accounted for around 13% of the time spent on house related activities in 2000 (ONS 2001).2 The market, currently worth around £12 billion per year in the UK, has been growing at a steady rate of around 7-8% per year since the late 1990s (Mintel 2003; 2005). DIY sits in complex position in relation to some of the central categories through which social science cuts up the world. As the booming trade figures indicate, doing DIY certainly involves consumption. At the same time, through materially transforming domestic space, and often seeking to enhance property value, DIY can be seem also as production. For many, DIY is a form of leisure, at least some of the time, whilst for others it is work. However, DIY has received little attention from academic social science. 1 The research from which this paper emerges is part of Designing and consuming: objects, practices and processes, a two year project funded under the Cultures of Consumption programme, by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, award no. RES- 154-25-0011. Further details of the project can be found at www.durham.ac.uk/designing.consuming. 2 cf., for example, c.60% on cleaning, c.15% on gardening (ONS 2001) Filling gaps – literature on DIY and the work of consumption A search of academic bibliographic databases does little to help basic understanding of what specifically counts as DIY. ‘DIY’ crops up in references repeatedly in relation to fields such as law, health and IT maintenance, or in relation to anti-corporate counter culture. These metaphoric applications of the term do serve to highlight the basic characteristic of DIY which makes it an interesting empirical site for testing theories of consumption. Across different fields of activity the term is used to refer to people providing for themselves services which they could otherwise (be expected) to pay a professional to do. However, as reflected in dictionary definitions, the term conventionally refers specifically to accomplishing home maintenance or modification tasks without the paid services of a professional, and it is this field of activity which is the focus of this paper. Across history and cultures, people of course have maintained and modified their own homes, but the term ‘DIY’, and the possibility of bounding a field of activity as a referent for that term, is historically and culturally specific. Whilst the phrase Do-It-Yourself has been found cropping up as early as 1912 in a US advertisement, and reaching common currency in the 1950s (Gebler 1997), the unproblematic relation of the phrase to a definite group of activities, and certainly its shortening to ‘DIY’ seems particular to the UK in the late 20th century. For example, although lifelong and second generation ‘DIYers’, a couple from the United States, respondents for this project, had never heard the term before leaving the US.3 The near invisibility of ‘DIY’ in bibliographic databases reflects not just this linguistic specificity, but a broader relative neglect of this field of activity by the social sciences, despite its scale as a social phenomenon. This is not to say that the neglect is complete. The following paragraphs review the existing literature, before drawing out three key themes on which we focus. A number of statisticians have paid attention to DIY and home maintenance and improvement behaviours, based on rational choice modelled analysis of large data sets such as the American Housing Survey (Pollakowski 1988; Bogdon 1996; Baker and Kaul 2002) and the Scottish House Condition Survey (Littlewood and Munro 1996). These analyses provide useful background on generic correlates of decisions to undertake home improvements and whether or not to employ someone to do it. For example, Pollakowski (1988) finds a complex relation between income and the likelihood of a household undertaking DIY, but a strong correlation with age, and that renovations are most likely to be undertaken by a recent mover (Bogdon 1996). Bogdon (1996) finds household composition a major determinant of the likelihood of a household taking on DIY, with multiple adult households most likely to undertake it, single parent families the least likely, as well as finding that people are more likely to take on a contractor where projects are of larger scale, complexity or risk. Baker and Kaul (2002) highlights the significant relationship of changes to household composition with the likelihood of home remodelling. Such studies, dependent on statistical analysis of secondary mostly quantitative data across huge samples, certainly indicate broad trends and conditions. However, they do not take us far in understanding DIY as a field of practice embedded in everyday life. Motivations for undertaking DIY which fit poorly into such analyses, such as the enjoyment gained from undertaking it, or the fear of hiring a bad tradesperson, find little more than passing mention. Neither do 3 The Compact Oxford English Dictionary and the Cambridge Advanced Learners’ Dictionary identify ‘DIY’ as British/UK. significant themes such as the role of DIY in divisions of household labour. But here too, the neglect of DIY and related issues by social science does not extend to complete absence. Munro and Leather (2000) explore homeowner’s accounts of why they take on specific home maintenance and improvement tasks, framed in the problem of the declining condition of the British housing stock despite increasing home ownership. They do not address the decision over whether change is effected through DIY or by employing a contractor - the mode of provision of the change. But they highlight that those tasks which improve the home as a consumption good – providing comfort, relaxation and a context for social interaction – are prioritized substantially above those which enhance the property as an investment. Woodward (2003), also without addressing modes of provision, explores the basis of decisions over home decoration and presentation in affluent suburbs of Brisbane, Australia, finding contrasting discursive strategies, one prioritizing comfort and practicality, the other the pursuit of aesthetic coherence and distinction, which he relates to the complex role of home and its relation to the definition of self. With a similar focus on the pursuit of aesthetic ideals in the home as a project of self-identity, Clarke (2001) specifically addresses changes affected through DIY projects, arguing that the making of the home constitutes a process of attempting to reconcile who people are with their image of who and what they would like to be. From very different perspectives, the field of retail studies has produced analysis of DIY situational purchase decisions (Van Kenhove et al. 1999) and motivations, whilst Williams (2004) critically explores a narrowly defined debate about the balance of economic necessity and consumer agency in the decision to do-it-yourself.
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